


For life's not a paragraph

by firstaudrina



Category: The History Boys
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:44:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. (Waugh)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For life's not a paragraph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miraielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraielle/gifts).



> Miraielle, I hope you enjoy it! I so wish I had time to write twice as much, but c'est la vie.

For life's not a paragraph

 

Waking up begins with saying _am_ and _now_. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized _I_ , and therefrom deduced _I am, I am now_. _Here_ comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because _here_ , this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what's called _at home_.  
 _A Single Man_ , Christopher Isherwood

 

In his journals, Scripps is any man but himself. He writes all in purposeful lowercase and collects his euphemisms (Euphemism: n., substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for a harsh or direct one. e.g. _General studies_ ) and his useless knowledge. He fills his pages with the detested gobbets, an accumulation of other people's art and not his own. Every so often he jots down a thought or a phrase, a momento: _pick up milk, essay due tomorrow, Joan today looked like a Waterhouse Ophelia._

 

He doesn't want to blame school for this. It's not entirely school's fault. Still, it cannot be a coincidence that the drying up of his ability and desire to write coincided with his acceptance.

 

(A smaller part of Scripps, the part of Scripps that is in parenthesis, points out very reasonably that it was at this time Hector died and Irwin was paralyzed and all of them went their separate ways. Something warm in Dakin became colder and harder; something sharp in Posner hovered right on the edge of breaking. Everything changed all at once, drastically, and it is hardly a surprise that Scripps cannot write.)

 

He goes to his lessons and hands in his papers and it's all perfectly _fine_ if not perfectly _right_. He scribbles his definitions in the margins (prosaic; uninspired; banal; dull) of his books; Posner is always catching him at it with that sad, almost motherly smile on his face. Scripps begins to find torn-off scraps of paper in all his books, upon which Posner has given him, in his distinct sloping lettering (which looks nothing like Dakin's now), some new definition or other.

 

"God, always moping," Dakin snits. "Would you just come out to the pub with me? You can have Jenny, she's a good girl."

 

Jenny being one of Dakin's castoffs, unique because she would not sleep with him. It offended him – not so much that he was actively upset but enough that he shagged her flatmate for revenge. Now properly humiliated, she is an acceptable option for Scripps.

 

"No thank you," Scripps says dryly. "Jenny's not actually yours to give. She might feel she has some say in it."

 

Dakin shrugs, careless. That's really the last thing that matters to him.

 

"Isn't he ridiculous," Posner says with a little sniff when Scripps tells him of this latest conversation. It's always hard to tell if the disappointment in his voice is at Dakin's antics or at the fact that Dakin's antics are with someone else.

 

"He always gets away with it too." Scripps closes the book he'd been reading with a snap, slouching and letting his head drop onto the back of his chair. He closes his eyes. "Bastard. How does he do it."

 

It's a pointless query, one Scripps doesn't expect answered. They both know how Dakin does it, with a flash of his wicked grin and that utterly conniving tone in his voice, as if he is doing you a favor by letting you suck him off. Persuasive bastard.

 

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.  
Oscar Wilde

 

Scripps has begun to look upon God as Dakin does one of his erstwhile girlfriends. God is always _there_ and _not_ there, palpable and intangible. Scripps is constantly reminded of His presence (like a jumper left over his flat or perfume pervading the room) and he has begun to become resentful of it. _Sick_ of it, to be perfectly honest, sick of the waiting and sick of hoping for something that he cannot put name to.

 

Scripps thinks: I should be glad. I got Oxford. God held up His end of the bargain.

 

It's selfish, really, to expect everything, but there it is. He isn't glad. He's only as overwhelmingly unsure as he ever was. University hasn't changed his life, only changed the lessons and the people in them. The comfort he once felt from religion is gone; the pew leaves lines on his knees and the chapel is always too chilly. The Holy Light just isn't what it used to be.

 

Scripps keeps going to church long after he begins to suspect his faith is lagging. It's half habit and half an unwillingness to admit it to himself; he grasps with both hands to what is familiar and does not want to let go.

 

It was only a year ago, only so many months, that he came here for his interview and knelt in the same college chapel he now finds so unbearable. Scripps has always been selfish in his desires and cowardly in his life (easier to deny himself as punishment, easier to live through Dakin), but then, that moment –

 

Oxford is not unlike God. That chasm within him, the one he had expected to be satisfied come September, yawns wide as ever. He wonders abstractly if there is anything of faith left in him at all and comes up with nothing more than a flippant quotation. How proud Irwin would be of Scripps' growing detachment.

 

 **melancholy:** n., originally: a pathological condition thought to result from an excess of black bile in the body, characterized in early references by sullenness, ill temper, brooding, causeless anger, and unsociability, and later by despondency and sadness.  
Later: severe depression, melancholia. Dejection, esp. of a pensive nature; an inclination or tendency to this. In the Elizabethan period, and for some centuries thereafter, the affectation of melancholy was a fashionable mark of intellectual or aesthetic refinement. _There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass_ (Charles Kuralt).

 

Scripps is glad for break, glad even to be back in Sheffield despite assertions he'd once made of not wanting to return. That had been in the heat of some schoolboy moment, spoken against the background noise of a motorcycle revving, and it wasn't to be taken too seriously.

 

Dakin does not come home, to the dejection of Mr. and Mrs. Dakin, instead choosing to waste his time with this week's girl (Anna) who is certain to not be next week's girl. It's really not the same without him and, though they all used to bitch about perfect bloody Dakin, without him the old Cutler's boys don't have an impetus to get together again. There is one half-assed football game at Rudge's behest but otherwise, nothing. Timms and Lockwood get up to their own nonsense and schemes; Scripps has never been particularly close with Crowther or Akthar. In the end it's just him and Posner, unsurprisingly, half-heartedly perusing old haunts.

 

Scripps goes to the old church, site of many a self-serving request disguised as honest faithfulness, and goes through the old paces. When he emerges, Posner is waiting there alongside his bike as always.

 

"Do the trick, do you think?" he asks, humor curling his mouth.

 

Scripps half-smiles, shaking his head. "Fuck off."

 

They go to the bookshop and music shop, get coffees before stopping back at Scripps'. It could be any Friday after school at Cutler's. They sit on the old beaten-up rug in Scripps' sitting room (mum at the market, dad at work) and slide new cassettes (Talking Heads for Scripps, Smiths for Pos) free from their packaging. They listen, they read, they speak sparingly. When they get bored, Scripps rises and settles at the piano, fingers falling over the familiar keys with expected ease. Next to him, Posner sings quietly. When they finish, he drops his head onto Scripps' shoulder, an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture. Scripps freezes up for a moment but relaxes just as quickly. It's only the two of them.

 

When it comes time to go back, Scripps drags his heels and his lone bag all the way to the station, Posner by his side. It's not until the train is pulling in that Scripps realizes Posner does not have a bag of his own.

 

"Are you not coming with?" he asks, eyeing empty hands. Perhaps Posner's planning on the later train with Akthar.

 

"No, not yet," Posner answers in that low, amused tone of his that can only signal bad things to come. "I'm here for a bit, actually. I didn't want to tell you. Rather, didn't know how."

 

Sounding more appalled than he intends, Scripps exclaims, "Were you not going to say something until I'd gotten on the train?"

 

"You might have talked me out of it." Posner's hands hang by his sides, something defeated in his stance. "All that work, you know, and me just giving it up."

 

"I – " Scripps is at a loss. " _Why_?"

 

Posner shrugs, too casual. "I have my reasons." His eyes fly to the train. "You should get going, you know, you don't want to miss it. Give Dakin my regards. Or don't, I'm sure he doesn't care."

 

The train sounds. Scripps starts and casts it an annoyed look before turning back to Posner. "You can't just… _leave_."

 

"Dear Scrippsy," Posner says fondly. Scripps has the sense Posner's checked out of the conversation. "Always so certain."

 

Scripps wonders where Pos heard that bit of gossip. He's never certain. "When will you be back?"

 

Posner gives him a shove, forced playfulness. It's not like Posner and they both know it; he tries to cover it up with a short laugh. "Get on, will you? It'll leave without you."

 

Huffing an irritated breath, Scripps leaves.

 

From the window of his compartment, he watches Posner and Posner watches back. Hunched and sad, he gives Scripps a pathetic little wave once the train begins to move. There's a look on his face like he might have something more to say, some last-minute utterance hovering on the tip of his tongue. Scripps leans forward slightly through the window, ready to catch whatever it is, but in the end Posner says nothing. The train departs, Pos getting smaller and smaller with distance. Scripps scribbles down a new definition: _bereft_.

 

 **consolation:** n., alleviation of sorrow or mental distress. _All literature is consolation._

 

Shivering back into his clothes in the morning (a gray and distressingly damp morning it is and Scripps without his umbrella), Scripps thinks he could've waited a bit longer. He does not wake Joan as he goes though he leaves her a note like a proper lad, excluding his number like an improper one.

 

Crossing into the wet morning air, he feels mostly the same. Angels do not herald him nor does he feel any crushing dissatisfaction. He goes to chapel, goes through the rote. When he emerges, there is no Posner waiting with an apple and, though he hadn't expected him, Scripps still feels a passing pang of fondness.

 

Scripps did like it – or would have liked it, he supposes, if he had taken any time at all to enjoy it. It was all so quick and stumbling, hardly a thing of poetry. He hadn't really tried to make it one. He hadn't paused once, didn't take time to marvel at the soft curves of her, her laughing eyes, the way her nipples hardened under his fingers. Her mouth, he did notice, was at odds with her naturally cheerful face, the corners tilting down in a perpetual frown.

 

It was – not perfunctory, exactly, but not deliberate either. It went how Scripps thought it was always meant to go: clothes off, the shocking feeling of so much of someone else's skin on his, inside, outside, inside. Done, with the vaguest sensation of long nails biting pleasantly into his arms. Joan got herself off. She didn't seem to expect it from Scripps and it was that, more than anything else, that made him sympathetic to her. She'd said, voice tired but not particularly bothered, "You can sleep here tonight, if you like." He hadn't wanted to (coward that he is) but he fell asleep before he could motivate himself to stand.

 

He tells Dakin, God knows why, and gets to sit through five minutes of uninterrupted laughter for his trouble.

 

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well / That, for all they care, I can go to hell / … / Admirer as I think I am / Of stars that do not give a damn / I cannot, now I see them, say / I missed one terribly all day.  
W. H. Auden

 

It all coalesces into a restlessness Scripps has neither the wherewithal or desire to combat. He drums his fingers throughout his lessons. He reads voraciously but without patience – he'll read five pages here, five pages there, skipping from book to book without ever settling on one, for hours. He even humors Dakin by joining him at the pub most nights, but alas – nothing satisfies Scripps.

 

Without his God, he has a lot more free time. He tries to fill it with writing poetry. He's not successful.

 

None of it feels like him. Be his prose sparse and sharp or full of complex rhythm, none of it feels like him. No artistic truth, so to speak. No experience, no inspiration. Dakin tells him to get laid, which, as far as Dakin is concerned, is both wonderful affliction and maddening medicine – it's everything, the secret to everything.

 

Scripps has a wank or six; he doesn't exactly have visions over them.

 

Posner seems similarly dissatisfied. He calls Scripps up with a myriad of minor complaints, sounding as bored as any Sheffield housewife Scripps has ever known. Whatever he thought he'd find on his break isn't what he's getting. "If I live in Sheffield another six months," Posner says to him on the phone, "I shall throw myself in front of the train. Let's _go_ somewhere, Scrippsy."

 

"Alright," Scripps says, humoring him. "Where shall we go?"

 

"Paris," Posner says immediately, wistfully. Then, perhaps embarrassed by his romantic tone, he emphasizes, " _Anywhere_."

 

"Latvia," Scripps teases. "You'd rather be there than Sheffield?"

 

"Yes," Posner answers, prim and stubborn. "I'd rather be in Oregon than Sheffield."

 

Scripps laughs.

 

"Really, Scripps." Posner's voice has taken on a tinge of impatience. "What have you got going for you there that's so spectacular?"

 

Scripps doesn't have an answer for that.

 

You've been a long way away.  
Thank you for coming back to me.  
 _Brief Encounter_

 

Scripps doesn't think any of them have gotten over those last few months. How could they? All that exaltation, all their work paid off, everything reaching upwards – and then getting that call, filtered first through Mum ( _Dear, there's something from your school about an accident? One of your teachers, I think, something about a motorbike?_ ), then trading it between each other ( _D'you think he was touching Irwin up?_ ). They put on their best suits, Lockwood even foregoing his badges, and went to the funeral, a first for most of them.

 

He doesn't know who decided on singing "Blackbird" – though, to be honest, most likely Posner – but rehearsing was good for them. It was normalizing. It was after that, after the song finished and school finished that they realized nothing technically tied them together anymore. Except, he supposes, the teachings of one Mr. Hector; poetry, however, is not elastoplast and so they drifted. Sometimes Dakin could rally them together for football (funny enough, Dakin being the one to do that) but always that last year pervades the moment. They'd rather say nothing to each other than talk about that.

 

Over break, Posner had tried to bring it up. "D'you think about Hector still?" he'd asked, not quite a question because the answer was so obvious. Scripps thinks he'd answered with Auden and Posner had been marginally satisfied.

 

poising  
to again utterly disappear;  
ee cummings

 

Taking in a last look at the grounds, Scripps hitches his duffel higher on his shoulder. It's heavy primarily with books and jumpers; there's not much else to Scripps. He takes in the grounds. _Here my last love died_ , he thinks, because heaven forbid he have an emotion not linked to a quotation. Here his last love died and no grave to mark His passing.

 

He supposes he will miss the stones and the history and, egotistically enough, the sense of pride. _I attended Oxford_ , he hears himself say to his parents' friends, imagining impressed reactions. _I attended Oxford. I ran away to Berlin_.

 

It's an embarrassing habit, planning the bio that will hopefully appear in the back flap of a book one day: _Donald Scripps attended Oxford University for nearly two years before moving to Berlin, Germany_.

 

It's not really like him, but right now that's for the best.

 

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.  
Oscar Wilde

 

Posner seems surprised to see him, even though they had spent weeks discussing and planning this very move. Posner's smile is nervous and pleased, flush high on his cheeks. Taking action is thrilling. It's no wonder Dakin's the force that he is, he's all action.

 

Being the not-Dakins they both are, they hesitate before they move further, pausing on the platform with people hurrying around them and time pressing in. They hesitate – but Scripps, brain full of Dakin and Irwin and Hector and Tot, thinks _fuck it_ and grasps Posner by the elbow, gets on the damn train.

 

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindess of the soul!  
Allen Ginsberg

 

His parents are pleased, really – they always hoped he would do something so normal as run off and abandon all responsibility.

 

He and Pos get a flat and first one, then two cats who are properly called Laura and Alec and instead mainly referred to as _get off the coffee table you bastard cats_. Laura is shivery and gray with quick white paws that hardly settle. Alec is orange and fond of curling around Scripps' typewriter.

 

They settle in with surprising ease, considering both of them butcher their German horribly. The flat is technically one cold room with rather nice windows and a communal bathroom down the hall. They choose it mainly because of the old, out of tune piano pushed against one wall. It's not a very nice room or building or area, but it's very literary and so Scripps is pleased.

 

They get jobs that don't pay very well tutoring people in English and waiting tables at a nearby restaurant, things neither of them are really qualified enough to do. Posner's trying to convince the place they work at to let him sing some Friday night.

 

Scripps' desk becomes his new altar. It's an old (possibly infested) wooden slated thing they'd found on the street and shoved against the white-washed cinderblock wall under one of the more lonely-looking windows (which finally had a curtain – or, rather, a piece of sheer fabric that was once a cabaret girl's shawl that Posner tacked above the frame). On it he keeps his books, new and old, fresh unbent paperbacks co-mingling with bitten-leather-bound tomes Hector would be fond of. Empty liquor bottles sit at the other end next to candles they keep in case the lights go out again. Half the candles are freshly store-bought, the other half makeshift amalgamations of candles past, wads of wax melting slowly inside old jars, flaming poking out of multiple burned-down wicks. A hat Pos bought him from a consignment shop perches sometimes on the books, sometimes on the sill. The skinny desk drawers hold pens and pencils, notebooks and scrunched up half-forgotten ideas scrawled on napkins. The wall behind the desk has tacked on it pictures and poems and inspiration for them both, a re-imagining of the old wall at Cutler's (though of course they don't mention that). In the center of it all is Scripps' typewriter, beige and bland with its sticky keys and cigarette ash ground in around the letters. He loves it madly, the old thing, as much as one loves a pet or an acquaintance only seen at the holidays, a rush of fondness seemingly from nowhere.

 

"It's good here, isn't it?" Posner asks from where he's sitting against the window staring down at the street below, hands wrapped around a cup of tea for warmth. "Less oppressive somehow. I haven't even thought about – well. Isn't it, though?"

 

"It is," he agrees easily. He doesn't ask for clarification, knowing the end of Posner's sentence was probably (as it usually is) _Dakin_. "Are you happy here, Posner?"

 

An amused light enters Posner's eyes and, when he speaks, his voice lilts up in a way not his own. "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars."

 

 **platonic:** adj., of love, affection, or friendship: intimate and affectionate but not sexual; spiritual rather than physical. _I know nothing about platonic love except that it is not to be found in the works of Plato._ (Edgar Jepson) 

 

Having never lived in such a small space with another person, Scripps hadn't really had any expectations. He and Pos got on, so he assumed it would be fine even though he knew it would be a tight fit. He did _not_ (idiotically, in retrospect) realize the slowly growing collection of annoyances living with someone else would produce.

 

There's Posner always leaving his mugs on Scripps' papers, ruining the ink and leaving beige half-moons behind. There's Posner's obsessive tidying; Scripps can never find anything once he's set it down for longer than ten minutes. There's coming in at different hours, always waking each other up, and trying not to feel uncomfortable changing in front of each other and, yes, above all things, the bed.

 

The bed existed in the room before they did and, funds limited to rent and feeding themselves, they didn't have enough money to replace it with two. So they each claimed a side and they stick to it, hovering uncomfortably close to the edges and leaving the middle a no-man's-land.

 

Posner's homosexuality doesn't bother Scripps. It never has. He doesn't hold any ignorant worries about Posner hitting on him or trying to catch him undressed. It's just that the last (and only, really) time he shared a bed with someone, it ended in humiliation and disaster. He's not used to the closeness.

 

Sometimes Posner doesn't come back at all. These nights, Scripps never knows whether he should be grateful or not. He's got the place to himself, solitude in which to write, but…Well, he worries about Posner. He worries about him out there chasing after his blokes, worries about him getting hurt. Scripps would've expected Posner to get swallowed up in a place like this and the realization that he doesn't makes Scripps want to kick himself for being so doubtful. He shouldn't worry. Posner is fine.

 

let me take your hand / I'm shaking like milk  
turning / turning blue / all over the windows and the floors  
but I don't care if you don't / and I don't feel if you don't  
and I don't want it if you don't / and I won't say it / if you don't say it first  
The Cure

 

The lights go out occasionally. It's something they've gotten used to (like the lack of hot water in the bathroom half the week), though the cats hate it, always hiding under the bed cuddled in one of Scripps' jumpers until the lights come back. He and Posner sit side by side in front of the largest window, taking in the drunks and letting in the streetlight.

 

"Was it just that girl?" Posner asks suddenly. His open curiosity is something Scripps could never get used to; for some reason it always made him feel like Posner knew much more than Scripps did. "Just the once?"

 

Wryly, Scripps counters, "Why do you want to know?"

 

Posner, reflected in the windowpane, looks momentarily abashed. His reflection, Scripps notes abstractly, is paler than him – a ghostly Posner with his hair sticking up in tufts and his eyes too dark in his face. He shrugs. "You rarely go out. I just wondered why you weren't ever looking for someone else. It couldn't have been bad enough to turn you off to it entirely."

 

To be honest, Scripps is bored of being asked why he isn't always out looking for a shag. "There's no reason," he says with a huff of impatience. "I'm just not looking. It's not a crime."

 

"Don't be defensive," Posner chides gently. "I'm just curious. You're quite good looking, in case you didn't know. It wouldn't be that hard for you." Scripps raises an eyebrow. Posner smiles. "Don't give me that look, I'm just saying."

 

"What about you then?" He casts around for the makeshift ashtray (formerly a tin of cat food) and the pack of cigarettes. Smoking is a Berlin thing.

 

"Six," Posner says definitively. Scripps gives a low little whistle, shooting Posner an impressed look. Pos smirks. "I did say I liked Berlin, didn't I?"

 

Scripps laughs, flicking ash into the tin. "Looks like Berlin likes you too."

 

It's something Scripps has thought about. Boys. He won't pretend he hasn't. Sometime during Dakin's planned proposition to Irwin, it came into his head and he wondered, briefly, about himself – and then he read a Psalm and that was that.

 

"I take it they're one-offs?" he says now, gaze flicking toward Posner. "Or d'you have several special blokes you're just not bringing round?"

 

"Shut up." Amused, Posner plucks the cigarette out of Scripps' hand. "No one special. 'Cept you, of course, Scrippsy."

 

Posner's affections are always random and matter-of-fact like that; it always throws Scripps off. "You don't shag me, though."

 

"No," he says with a little smile, glancing over at Scripps before focusing on the street again. The way he says _no_ sounds unfinished.

 

Half aware of what he's doing, Scripps says, "Tell me about them."

 

Looking less bemused by this request that Scripps would have liked, Posner complies. He tells Scripps about the Oxford boy, Jamie, and how badly it ended. How it felt to touch another boy for the first time and, nonchalantly, he mentions Jamie's motorbike. Then a rushing fumble of names – Lukas, Max, Alexander, Erik, Anton. Erik looked like Dakin and Anton was ginger; Lukas had a girlfriend and Alexander gave fantastic head. Max was the only one he had at the flat, while Scripps was working. Scripps is unexpectedly affronted – in _his_ bed? In the place where they sleep? He nearly casts a wary eye back at the bed, as if the sheets retain the ghost of Posner and Max, of a fucking one off.

 

"It bothers you," Posner says softly.

 

Scripps frowns. "It's my bed."

 

"Our bed," Posner corrects.

 

Scripps takes the cigarette back only to ground it out before digging out another. The flicker of the lighter is nothing in the dark. It barely illuminates.

 

Hesitantly, Posner says, "Don." Strange in his mouth, Scripps' name. It occurs to Scripps that no one has called him Don since he was last home. Posner's stare drops down to where Scripps' mouth purses around the cylinder of the cigarette before drifting back to his eyes. "Is this – "

 

"Yeah," Scripps says, despite being not entirely sure what Posner is getting at. Then Scripps kisses him.

 

Scripps could count the number of people he's kissed in his life on one hand. Posner takes like smoke and the wine from earlier and also more banal, unromantic things like warmth and saliva. It's as unsure a kiss as he's ever had. It lasts for the longest moment, breathless, and Scripps is startled when Posner moves to touch his cheek.

 

Everything halfway familiar becomes strange. Usually Posner hardly touches him at all, let alone lays his small cold hand on Scripps' throat or curls it in the fabric of his shirt. Posner's skin is very icy, very pale in the dark. The only light is from the street outside and shadowed as he is, he almost looks ill.

 

It's Posner who relocates them; like Posner it is too, his moments of initiative. Scripps is at a genuine loss as to where to put his hands or his mouth, now that he's actually trying. Dakin said with sex you were making it up all the time. Posner's hands are under his shirt, teeth on Scripps' jaw when he says, as if it's an option, "Should we not?"

 

"You can't save it up," Scripps murmurs, another Dakinism.

 

He lets Posner lead on the assumption he knows what he's doing but Posner doesn't seem to know what to do with that. His every move is doubtful, fleeting, as if he fears the wrong one will send Scripps running. His cold hands are on Scripps' cold chest and his mouth on Scripps' collarbone is the only real warmth in the room. Scripps gasps when Posner's tongue touches his stomach; spurred on by this, Posner moves lower, unlatching Scripps' belt with the ease of something done regularly.

 

Scripps thought it might be different with a boy and it is, but only because now he's paying attention. The unsure way Posner bites his lip, the pink flush in his cheeks – Scripps files it all away to write down later. It's so _strange_ to see a boy he's known most of his life like this, to see Pos pressing a kiss to his hipbone.

 

When Posner swallows him down, all awareness is forgotten. Scripps screws his eyes shut as a groan leaves his lips, wonders obscurely how he could write this down – the only words in his head are filthy ones, sweet poetic pornography. He lets his hands bury themselves in Posner's hair, slipping off the short strands, until he can't take it anymore and twists up fistfuls of sheets, comes apart.

 

No – apart isn't really appropriate. He reaches an apogee, a zenith, heart shuddering in his ears.

 

"Alright?" Posner kisses his shoulder. Scripps barely breathes out the answering alright before he's rising up and pressing Posner back against the mattress.

 

After, Scripps sits up against the headboard and watches Posner, who's sitting up against the footboard with the sheets pooled around his waist. "Horizontally speaking," Scripps asks, lips twitching into a grin even as his cheeks go pink, "how'd we do?"

 

Strange, again: Posner's gaze flicking over Scripps' body with obvious intent. "Certainly not the worst I've ever had." He tilts his head. "Did you like it?"

 

Scripps drops his gaze, ignores his insistent blush. "Didn't kick you out of bed, did I?" he finally answers, gruffly.

 

Posner's mouth (which Scripps has seen curled around poems and shaping Broadway standards and, now, tracing Scripps' own skin) quirks into a grin. He teases, "Such pillow talk."

 

Feeling absurd, Scripps laughs – this is _Posner_ he's talking to, _Posner_ he's just been kissing. The heat they built in the tiny room is cooling, leaving behind the scent of bodies and what they do. Posner's hair is sticking up even more humorously then before and it's because of Scripps, because Scripps took him to bed. Though really, he supposes it's more correct to say Pos was the one that took him.

 

Alec jumps lightly onto the bed, crossing to the pillow next to Scripps and curling up like a fluffy orange loaf. Scripps scratches between tiny striped ears. "Did we fuck it all up, do you think?"

 

since feeling is first  
who pays any attention  
to the syntax of things  
will never wholly kiss you;  
wholly to be a fool  
ee cummings

 

All the lines have blurred, smudged to nothing. They sleep naked under their sheets, shuddering with the cold and pressing closer, closer. Scripps buries his face in Posner's neck, wrapped around Posner like he wouldn't expect himself to. Scripps has never been very physical; he's never had a reason to touch. Yet his arms wind around Posner's torso, their legs caught together. He grows attached to the constant press of bare skin, sometimes more comforting than sexual. Scripps dreads the morning, dreads untangling.

 

He's not sure Posner has stopped seeing his German blokes. He doesn't want to ask, afraid of shattering this thing they have. There isn't a big turning point where Posner stops feeling like his friend and starts feeling like his lover. Sex aside, he still feels like Posner, only this new strange Posner Scripps hasn't quite learned yet.

 

Scripps stumbles from his desk to the mattress, the only journey he makes most days, and falls asleep with his face squidged uncomfortably against Posner's back, trying to ignore the headache induced by drinking wine steadily from one in the morning til six as he typed in an unwavering stream.

 

Casual sex, photography, typing, mangling German, sitting at the window with a cigarette in his mouth, in pants and a jumper and one sock, in trousers and suspenders, fucking Posner on the not-quite-dry-inked sheets of poetry he'd just spewed, beautiful chaotic Berlin that is as far from Sheffield as Scripps has ever been, metaphorically and not.

 

It's just then, just when Scripps has begun to allow himself to believe that this is truly his life, that his mum calls up and it all goes to shit. "Oh, Donny, darling," she says, voice tinny on the phone, "It's your dad, love, he's in hospital."

 

Worry creases Posner's brow. "Will he be alright?"

 

"Dunno." Scripps rummages beneath the bed for any wayward clothing.

 

"Well, you won't be gone too long, will you?" Posner's voice has taken on a sharp note Scripps attributes to housewifely anxiety.

 

"Dunno," he says again.

 

"Do you want me to come?"

 

"No. It's fine, Pos. I'll give you a ring when I get there, alright?"

 

Posner does something he never does unless they're in bed and kisses Scripps on the mouth. Scripps doesn't think he imagines the touch of Celia Johnson in Posner's voice. "I will miss you very much."

 

Scripps smiles exhaustedly.

 

Posner escorts him to the train. There is the déjà vu sensation of having done this before, except Scripps is even more unwilling to get on the train than he was the last time. "Look after the cats, yeah?" he says, pressing a kiss to Posner's forehead before he can decide against it.

 

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking…Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.  
Christopher Isherwood

 

His mementos of Berlin take up no more or less space than the ones of England that came with him. Some photographs, more papers than before. Most everything he left with Posner, knowing his things would be in good hands. Taking too much felt like leaving too much behind.

 

Hunched in his coat, he scribbles away any details of Berlin he might have formerly thought too inconsequential to write down. It's as if he thinks he will forget it.

 

He does suspect he won't be back.

 

When he gets home, dropping his bag right by the door, the first thing he does is not call his mother or get a taxi to the hospital or even check to see if his mum left a note. First he sits at the piano and lets his fingers drift over the well-worn keys. Scripps plunks out a few half-hearted notes.

 

"I'm a fool," he sings to himself (bitterly, almost). "And don't I know it."

 

He never writes it down.


End file.
